CMC President's Board of Trustees recap and news for July 2024

Hi Copper Mountain College. This is Daren Otten.

This is the board report from Thursday, July 11, 2024. I do want to start just with a couple of things that I think is important to update the
entire campus around our trustees. First and foremost, Trustee Liz Meyer has served on the Board of Trustees at Copper Mountain College for
19 years announced her resignation. And I’d like to read real quick the letter that she has submitted and sent to all of you and asked me to
share.

Dear Board of Trustees, faculty, staff and students of Copper Mountain College. Please accept this letter as my formal notification of my
resignation from the position of Trustee at Copper Mountain College, effective July 11th, 2024. It has been an honor and a privilege to serve on this
board for the past 19 years.

Throughout my tenure, I have been continuously impressed by the dedication and commitment of my fellow board members, the faculty and staff. Copper Mountain College has always maintained its commitment to providing personal service to our students, which I believe has been our greatest strength. While we will always welcome encourage more students to enroll, the small college atmosphere and individualized attention we offer has set us apart and has made a significant impact on countless lives.

After careful consideration, I have decided to step down to focus on a personal journey. However, my heart will always remain with Copper Mountain College. I will continue to support the college and its mission in whatever way I can as a community member. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity
to have contributed to the growth and development of our institution. The experiences I’ve gained and the relationships I formed during my time as a
trustee have been invaluable. I have full confidence that the college will continue to thrive and serve our community with distinction.

I wish the board, the college, the college administration, faculty, staff and most importantly, our students continued success in all future endeavors. Thank you for understanding and for your support during my time on the board.

Sincerely, Liz Meyer.

And for those of you who know Liz. Liz has embarked on a adventure with her son on a boat and will be traversing the eastern waterways of the country in a way that only most of us who live in the desert could ever dream of. And really, we are going to miss Liz. I’ve learned a lot from Liz. I think everybody here at this college has learned a lot from Liz. And as one of the matriarchs of our community, she’s not going anywhere. She’s just on an adventure. She will be here. She is returning. But it obviously was impacting her board service.

So what is going to happen is that at the August board meeting, I expect that the Board of Trustees will open up the process for appointment for her seat. The only requirements for someone to be considered for appointment will be that they are a resident in the district that Liz serves, and that they are over 18 years old. That’s it. So that that will be the call that will go out, most likely with the board conducting interviews for an appointment to
replace her sometime in late August early September.

That brings us to trustee Jerry Garber.

And Trustee Garber has been battling some health challenges of late, and unfortunately, he also was involved in an accident that has him in rehabilitation for some time. And we’re still not sure exactly what his return to service will be. I’m hopeful that I will get to see him this week,
but the return to service for Doctor Garber still is a little bit unknown, and that also may or may not, I’m not aware, impact his decisions on
whether or not he will run in the November election for the balance of a two year seat.

And so, just as kind of an update, we’ve got three seats that are full term seats that are currently on the ballot for November. There will be three
seats on the election in November, and that will include the Yucca Valley side seats for full four year terms. So what we have there is Trustee Rogers, Trustee Lombardo and Trustee Gilbert’s seats will be on the ballot for the 29 side. The balance of two years, or the balance of the term that Jerry Garber was appointed to, will be on the ballot. And then there will be the appointment for, obviously, Trustee Meyer.

With that many positions on the board on the ballot, as well as an appointment that’s forthcoming. I do expect to see some change, uh, on the board as we move forward. What that looks like no one really knows, but it is an opportunity that, you know, we’ll get to work with new trustees, I suspect. And, we will be looking forward to the future with a few new faces, uh, showing up at least, you know, a couple of times a month, uh, doing their trustee duties.

So, speaking of trustee duties, going back to the board study session last week, we kicked that off. Specifically associated with the board goals. Many of you have participated in providing feedback with board goals that they considered associated with both their progress as well as their setting of new goals, and really reviewing all the relevant documents for board goal setting. And those include everything from board policies to educational master plans to our equity plans. And of course, our mission vision values.

And so out of all of that, last week the board did complete their annual self-evaluation. They then reviewed the progress reports of both the Board of
Trustees goals for 23-24, my presidential goals for 2324. And we discussed and drafted new board goals for 24-25, for both them and for me.

What will be happening with that is that those draft goals will be circulated in advance of the next board meeting. The board will be taking feedback and then be considering any feedback that’s received at the board meeting as well. In August. That will be considered the first read. Any updates that are made at that point will go to the September meeting is the second read, which I will then expect the board to adopt goals for them and as well as adopt goals for me.

So that concluded really what the study session was about.

Moving to the regular board meeting, we had several kinds of updates associated with what was happening just across the campus, but two major presentations that happened. One, Chelsea Chastain’s, Student Life presentation was shared with the trustees as well as the attendees. And of course, Chelsea does amazing work on behalf of our students every year.

Additionally, Jennifer Baker presented the EEO plan that has been submitted and adopted at this point as the second reading, and I look forward to
working with the campus community as we work through to implement that plan. Also at the board meeting, CMC updated organizational charts were
provided, as we do both in July typically as well in January every year, with some organizational chart changes. If there are changes that impact individual employees, their supervisors will be having conversations with them.

Finally, board adopted Board policy 4220 the Standards of Scholarship, which I truly want to appreciate. The Academic Senate’s time that they spent this last year working through that particular document. It was a lot of work. It was a significant lift, and it is going to be the kind of cornerstone of
several related policies that I know we’ll be working on this year.

There’s been lots of questions about the Follett bookstore agreement as well, and the board did approve the virtual bookstore agreement. But I want to make sure people understand that right now, we have an agreement with Follett to potentially serve selling physical books. That doesn’t mean we’re
not going to have a physical store that will be able to sell other things. We are continuing to work through our options associated with that.

And of course, as we move further and further away from physical books in many of our classrooms, that will be less of a concern about when students
or where students can get books. Of course, students can get books anywhere they can find the book for the class, but when books are free or they’re open educational resources, that’s even better.

And then the last thing I’ll just say is we did have to have a special meeting at the immediate conclusion of our regular meeting. And I just want to be transparent about why that was. We had to have a resolution and that was ordering school district election for the governing board members whose terms expire in November. And so that was the three Yucca Valley trustee’s terms. They all expire. We had a resolution that we provided the county registrar, and we failed to get that, I failed to get that, on the agenda for the regular meeting. And so that’s why that’s there. And the board ultimately adopted that, that’s been submitted so that the election will go as needed.

And that is the report. And I hope everybody is having a amazing July and is staying as cool as you can be over the last couple of weeks. See you next month.